comScore: Facebook's mobile app had 85.57 million unique users in December 2012, surpassing Google Maps to rank first

In the early morning of January 24, 2012, the US market research company comScore released a report on Wednesday saying that Facebook surpassed Google Maps to become the top-ranked mobile application in the US market.

The report shows that in December last year, Facebook's mobile app had 85.57 million unique users, surpassing Google Maps to rank first. In September last year, Apple released the iOS 6 operating system and no longer included Google Maps as a pre-installed application. However, after its own map service failed, Apple had to put Google Maps back in the App Store.

ComScore believes that Apple's blocking of Google Maps for a period of time is an important reason for Facebook's overtaking. By the end of 2012, Google Maps had 74.63 million unique users, ranking second. It was followed by Google Play, Google Search, Gmail and YouTube. Google occupied five of the top six apps. It is worth noting that Apple iTunes only ranked 8th.

While Google dominates in unique user visits, Facebook apps consistently rank first in time spent, with 23% of time spent on Facebook apps, excluding 3% for photo-sharing app Instagram, compared with 10% for all Google apps, according to comScore.